lately i don't think of you at all
by broken-social-contract
Summary: Emma fulfills the role scripted for her by fate: she breaks the curse and sets into motion the end of fairy tales, of larger-than-life characters, of magic. She wants a reset button.
1. I

**title**: (lately) i don't think of you at all [1/3]  
**words**: 2,500+  
**summary**: _Emma fulfills the role scripted for her by fate: she breaks the curse and sets into motion the end of fairy tales, of larger-than-life characters, of magic. She wants a reset button.  
_**rating**: R  
**warning**: This is a dark fic with character death. There will be mentions of violence.  
**characters**: Emma, Regina  
**disclaimer**: I don't own anything. Even Starbucks owns the internet connection I use.

_lately i don't think of you at all  
or wonder what you're up to, or how you're getting on_  
The Helio Sequence

—

Emma fulfills the role scripted for her by fate: she breaks the curse and sets into motion the end of fairy tales, of larger-than-life characters, of magic.

She wants a reset button.

—

For four years (almost five in three months), she works at Norms off the Pacific Coast highway on the overnight shift, seeing the diner go from bar night rush to the silence of early morning dawn reserved for truckers that keep to themselves and insomniacs with their addictions and vices, crouched in booths alone with spiral notebooks, sketchpads, or laptops. Emma likes the quiet best, when night is at its darkest and the faint pink and orange of sunrise are just preparing to punch through that inky black canvass.

She watches the trickle of cars pass by the window between filling coffee cups, wiping down tables, and re-stocking napkin holders. The soft drone of the radio serves as welcome white noise.

At 4:57 AM, the door opens with a _ding_, the bell above it jingling to signal the entrance of a new customer. Emma speaks before looking up from the bar, where she has salt and pepper shakers lined up in a row to be refilled.

"Welcome to-," she starts, but the words catch in her throat, as if snarled by a net and left to hang, to dangle in the air waiting to be chopped down and released.

Air leaves her lungs, _whoosh_, when her chest constricts.

Regina holds her gaze for only a second before she jerks her head at an empty booth and moves without waiting for permission. She walks without faltering, without so much as a shake in that bravado; Emma's shock falls away a moment later, and then, she feels rage unshackled after years of disregard.

Words finally push past their confines. "Norms. You can sit anywhere," Emma finishes after a long beat, in one rushed breath. She steadies shaking hands on the stool beneath her, curling them around the metal edge as she draws in a mouthful of oxygen. Blinking once, twice, she hopes the woman is a figment of her imagination, the product of a sleep deprived mind.

"You got this one?" her co-worker asks, concern obvious in the quiet tone she uses. Dark eyes probe Emma with a number of questions that multiply with the seconds that pass in silence. Janet moves to slide off her own stool, setting a pepper shaker on the counter, but Emma's hand shoots out to stop her and takes a menu from the stack beside them.

"I got it," she says on an exhale, chest sinking visibly, and shuffles slowly across the room, heels of her sneakers scuffing the carpet. She ignores the look Janet shoots behind her back.

One of her regulars motions for a refill, coffee cup raised in the air, and she holds up an index finger. _One minute_, Emma thinks, _I just need a minute._

To do what exactly, she isn't sure.

Because what Emma wants to say is: _what the fuck are you doing here?_

Wants to scream, wants to yell and cry and roar: _get the fuck out._

She pictures grabbing Regina roughly by the arm and hauling her out of the restaurant, shoving her through the double doors and back out to be swallowed by the night. And, then she has no time to imagine scenarios, finding herself at the edge of Regina's booth, hip practically bumping into the edge of the table.

"You want anything to drink?" topples out instead. She drops a menu on the table and stares down at the top of Regina's head. Emma curls one hand into a fist. Her nails dig half-moon indentations into her palm – hard enough to almost break skin, almost draw blood.

Regina only blinks at the leather-bound menu before turning away.

"California omelette and coffee," she says. The tone borders on dismissive, though it's mostly devoid of anything, empty and quiet and low. Regina keeps her head turned to the window, to the now steady stream of cars starting off the morning commute.

Emma nods, chin tipping down to her name tag out of habit, "I'm Emma, by the way, I'll be your waitress." She watches Regina's reflection on the window. The other woman's lips curl, whether into a smile or sneer Emma can't quite tell. Doesn't really want to know, so she steps away.

"You know her or something?" Janet asks, face scrunching up, when Emma slides back beside her at the register to punch the order through. Janet leans back against the counter, head swiveling between the customer and Emma. "One of your one night stands finally come to chew you out?" She wiggles her eyebrows suggestively, and laughs when Emma's lips pull into a scowl.

"No. Thought I did, though," Emma says, glancing briefly at Regina over her shoulder. A hard smile surfaces, all straight lines and thin lips.

—

She remembers flesh giving way to cold steel, drawing blood as it sliced between ribs, piercing a lung that collapsed immediately with the twist of her wrist. Then, a laugh, slapping against the cold stone of the castle, until it turned into a gurgle, red liquid rushing up to fill the open mouth.

Emma wakes up tangled in sheets at four in the afternoon, sunlight filtering through slightly open slats of blinds. Her breaths come out harsh and loud between thundering heartbeats. She pushes herself up against the headboard, and runs a shaky hand through her hair, fingers tangling with unruly knots.

The studio apartment, the ceiling fan whirring overhead, the surfboard propped against the closet wall, the silver Mini Coop in her parking spot below. This is her life, now, she reminds herself.

Born and raised in San Jose, only to make her way south as an orphaned twenty-something whose parents died in a car crash. This is her story, now.

No, not just now.

This is her only story.

She heads to a nearby LA Fitness before another shift at Norms, propelling off the tiles with a strong kick and cutting through the water in sharp lines and even strokes. The smell of chlorine hangs thick, filling up her lungs with noxious fumes as sounds of splashing water from other swimmers echo off the rafters.

Opting to swim without goggles, her eyes burn and redden into her 10th lap, but she doesn't stop to rub them, to give them any sort of reprieve from the chemicals.

One, two, three (breathe out). Tilt head. Breathe deep. Tilt head, again. One, two, three (breathe out). She thinks of swimming the Pacific, straight into infinity. How long would she last? One, two, three (breathe out).

Her mind flutters back to castles and swords and blood – blood everywhere. Emma kicks off the wall harder, this time. Harder strokes, swifter kicks, until her body collapses from exertion. She sprawls on the cement by the starting block, flat on her back while struggling for air, greedily gulping mouthfuls.

In the space behind Emma's closed lids, there's an image of Regina in her jeans and plaid button-up standing in the middle of Norms. Her decision to treat Regina as a stranger plays on a loop like a broken record stuck on the same five seconds. Faced with the choice, Emma prefers denial over the truth.

(Ignorance is bliss. Wasn't this what she learned in another life?)

She rubs her eyes until the image is replaced with pinpricks of light in various colors, reminding her of the Lite-Brite she owned once as a child.

_One, two, three (breathe out)._

—

When Regina shows up again (5 AM on the dot, this time), three mornings later, Emma doesn't falter with her welcome greeting. She grabs a menu from a stack beside her, and saunters over with a well-placed smile.

She's excellent at this: lying to herself.

"California omelette and coffee," Regina orders before Emma can get out a word, and meets Emma's eyes this time.

Emma falters, squashes the menu tighter under her arm, and feels the start of a scowl emerging, suddenly annoyed.

She feels 28, again, beaten to the punch, as Regina stares her down with a knowing look. "Anything else?"

Regina looks away, then; Emma almost growls at the dismissal.

"You sure you don't know her?" Janet wheedles, from the bar where she's filling napkin holders. The twenty-two year old leans back far enough in her seat to get a view of Regina without needing to tilt her head.

"I'm sure." Emma nods, punching the order into the register before turning around to help fill the last two holders. "Never seen her before."

Regina is wearing another button-up (blue plaid), and the same dark wash jeans from the other morning.

Janet tries again. "Who'd you think she was the other day?" The question ends on a squeak as she propels herself back into her original position, hunched over the countertop, when Regina tilts her head in their general direction.

"An old friend," Emma smirks at the cherry red color of Janet's cheeks. "You sure you're not the one with a crush?"

"Not my type," Janet mutters, frowning at the way Emma tilts her head back to laugh, throaty and mocking.

"Not mine either."

—

They were never friends. Not even when they were the only ones left, tethered by a loss that could no longer be tallied by dead bodies but had to be measured by the hole blasted through what it was that made them human.

Emma spent nights in a tent with the other woman, separated by the space of an arm's length while they slept. She has forgotten the patterns of Regina's breathing, the telltale signs of a good dream (long and even, sprinkled with light snores) versus a nightmare (shallow and stilted, punctuated by whimpers), though she admits to knowing it once, years ago, in another world.

Another story, just not this one.

She drives towards Anaheim after her shift. It's the fourth time Regina eats at the diner, and her skin has begun to crawl at the memories she thought she left behind, somewhere in the flat plains of the Midwest between the Atlantic and the Pacific. She remembers a diner, a new story that tumbled out when she hitched a ride with a truck driver towards California, the farthest she could go with what she had at the time: four dollars and the clothes on her back.

Now, her dreams play them back, not vividly or in Technicolor, but like an old photograph, faded by sunlight, curled around the edges.

She makes it within two miles of Disneyland, and thinks of the characters inside, immortalized by August W. Booth via Walt Disney. There are days she hasn't forgiven him for sharing the stories with the rest of the world, for leaving the stories behind as an insidious reminder.

Though, there are some days (very rare), she appreciates having a place to drive towards, a beacon of some sort.

Emma exits the freeway and heads back north before it can come into view.

—

Leaning back against the stucco wall, Emma closes her eyes and lets out a shuddering breath.

A few hours ago, she had woken up from a dream of an unraveled curse, an entire world pulled violently out from hiding and restored to its proper plane of existence. Emma can still feel the fires of war prickling her skin, blistering heat that feels much worse than Indian summers. She can feel the uneven ground, shifting dirt, branches whipping at her face when she forgets to duck.

"I must say, this doesn't surprise me in the least."

Emma stiffens. "Oh yeah?" She works her mouth to form the words, throat raw from the memory and the dream and now, this. She blinks, adjusting again to the world of sight, and catches Regina watching her curiously.

"You do excel at running away, Emma," Regina turns to rest her back against the wall, mimicking Emma's pose.

"As opposed to holding on to the past?" Emma won't back down now that Regina has acknowledged what they have avoided for the past three weeks. Anger bubbles up, and it takes all her restraint not to sink into the impulse of strangling the other woman.

"Maybe it's all some of us have left," Regina murmurs quietly, pushing off the wall with a sardonic grin directed at no one in particular. Her smile comes out crooked as a corner of her lips curls up; Emma just frowns in return.

Somewhere down the street, a truck horn disrupts the stillness around them.

"What do you want, Regina?" Emma grabs her wrist when Regina begins to walk away. Her fingers squeeze harder than intended, but no one flinches. "I'm not in the mood to play games."

"I moved a month ago," is all Regina offers before shaking herself out of Emma's grip. "To an apartment a few miles from here."

Emma watches her disappear around the building, suddenly wishing she had hauled Regina out the diner that first morning, ordered her back to wherever she came from. She listens to the distant rumble of a car engine starting, listens as the hum softens to nothing.

A visible breath escapes pursed lips, blown into cupped hands that Emma then rubs together. _She's no one_, Emma reminds herself, _just a crazed stranger_.

When she makes it back inside to wipe down Regina's booth, she sees a slip of paper tucked between the folded bills.

Despite her better judgment, she pockets it, the paper weighing heavy where it settles between coins, a paper clip, and two pens.

—

At the pool, she imagines swimming against a current. Her legs and arms propel her back and forth between the confines of a pool. When her fingers graze tiles, she tucks her head down into her body, pushes her legs overhead, kicks off from the wall. Again and again and again, wishing it was an ocean instead, wishing there was a current to pull her under so she could have a reason to sink, not swim.

It was David who went first, who sank first, falling to his knees with his mouth twisted in shock (in pain) before smashing into the dirt, toppling like flimsy paper rather than a man. Mary Margaret had screamed somewhere in the distance while Emma froze into inaction. The bloody arrowhead protruded from his back as if it were another limb of some sort, right through his heart that should have been safe in the pericardium, nestled between the lungs, while it drummed out the music of life, itself.

Not David's, not anymore.

She screams into the water, where no one can hear. It floats up as bubbles, her fury, as if it's part of a breathing exercise. She swims until she's far enough from the memory of David, and the only sound left echoing in her head is the throbbing of her pulse as she pushes her body to its limit. Her throat and stomach spasm violently when she's in the showers; she dry heaves under the warm spray, pushed into tears, almost, but won't give in to that weakness.

An hour later, she calls Regina.

She snarls, veins full of Hennessey: "If you're not going to fucking leave, I will."


	2. II

**title**: (lately) i don't think of you at all [2/3]  
**words**: 2,500+  
**rating**: R  
**warning**: People die and stuff. Probably an excellent reason to avoid this.  
**characters**: Emma, Regina (with very light Swan Queen)  
**note**: Bear with me, I'm weak at writing the middle of the story. Hopefully, this doesn't turn you off to check out to end.  
**disclaimer**: I don't own _Once Upon a Time_. I also don't own the poem used in this part. It's by e.e. cummings. Also, the title is in reference to a Helio Sequence song, (not owned by me, either).

_They have hung the sky with arrows  
Targes of jubilant flame, and helms of splendor,  
Knives and daggers of hissing light, and furious swords.  
_e.e. cummings

—

War had erupted around them, violent and sudden, during a tour of the countryside. Emma remembers the speed at which it grew out of hand, like a car crash on the highway — blink and it's over, leaving only the wreck as evidence.

Emma blinked; then, she was alone, debris scattered everywhere.

She remembers the man that stumbled to the field the day the war began, already half-dead. His keening cry, unnatural in pitch, winds its way into Emma's thoughts during her more careless moments.

All the time, lately. Since Regina and that morning — 4:57AM, the sun still below the horizon.

He had whimpered pitifully, clutching onto David's tunic with charred fingers burned down to the fat, relaying news of a war.

A rebellion.

A massacre by the end, Emma thinks as she gulps down another shot that sears the lining of her throat. She feels warm when it settles, comfortable and numb as the heat radiates pleasantly. Emma wishes she could stay in this state forever: comfortable and numb. The world and everything in it a hazy distance, a_bearable_ distance.

Then, she sees them in the crowd: David in his collared shirts, August and his leather jacket, Archie with an umbrella. Her vision blurs when David smiles back, and she reminds herself to breathe despite the weight crushing her lungs into useless sacs of tissue.

Her eyes slip shut and she tells herself: _this isn't real_.

The room spins harder when she opens them again. Emma realizes she doesn't mind, finds it almost soothing how it reflects her insides – an inside-out mess of merged realities, of worlds without hard boundaries.

—

"Get up." The voice is cold, almost familiar but not quite. A hand shakes her in sharp jerks, gripping her shoulder fiercely. Emma tries to swim up to consciousness, suddenly panicked, confusing space and time and worlds.

The wolf in her dream growls at the soldiers, teeth bared and eyes flashing. Eyes like a human that Emma thinks she knows (the name is _there_, rushing, clanking, smacking against her teeth in a mad rush to get out). Then, the wolf lunges forward; Mary screams for Ruby (_that's it!_) somewhere in the background, too far away (Mary always screams from far away, a wall between them too thick to punch through).

But, there are too many soldiers and just one wolf. Emma yells, and screams, and pounds at their backs.

Another tug at her shoulder, harsher this time: "Emma, get up."

Emma finally grasps onto consciousness, lurching forward and gasping in a strangled voice, "Stop it, _please_!" The last word hitches on a sob. She falls off the edge of the bed in a mess of tangled limbs, blanket, and pillow at Regina's feet, eyes burning and chest tight.

"We need to go in twenty minutes," Regina finally says, in a voice that almost borders on soft. Crouching down, she grabs the pillow from Emma's side and moves towards the bed.

Emma tries to wrap her mind around the scene in front of her. Her head thumps painfully when she thinks. Hazy and out of order, her memories have merged with the dream, the forest and the bar woven together and Emma can't tell it all apart, where one stops and the other begins. She remembers Regina hovering in front of her with a cocked hip and a furious sort of glare but is it the Queen or Regina Mills, or this one, this new Regina in jeans and button-ups and boots?

Slowly, she untangles herself from the blanket and hands it to Regina. She finds her voice after a beat, still hoarse from sleep. "What am I—"

"You called _me_, dear."

Too tired to fight, Emma accepts the answer. There are other questions, too. But, she doesn't want to know beyond what she's asked already.

Besides, she's woken up in stranger places, and this, Regina's room decorated in cool blue tones, is cozy in comparison. There's a globe on a desk in the corner, and two clocks that have stopped with the small arm on 8 and the longer one on 3. There are books everywhere, overflowing out of packed shelves and onto the floor.

She thinks of asking if there are comic books, too, stashed in the crevices like a treasured secret, but she can't — "Bathroom?" She asks when her heart stutters before launching into a driving beat. The need to bolt tugs her under sharply, drowning her.

"Down the hall, on your right."

Her feet move quickly. Down the hall and through the open door to her right. She shuts it behind her, reaches for sink, twists both levers to run the water. Her cupped hands collect the liquid to wash her face. Repeats this all again and again and again until a knock breaks her out of the pattern.

Her fingers are pruned, by then. Her face raw from scrubbing.

"We should go," Regina calls out from the other side.

They find her car still parked across the bar, silver paint shining under the dim light of a lamppost. Emma struggles with her seatbelt while Regina watches the road; the engine rumbles steadily, filling the quiet.

There are words left to be said, Emma knows. Conversations that could stretch as long as infinity if they ever began. She settles on the only word needed, at least for right now, as dawn breaks through night.

"Thanks," she mutters before climbing out.

Red taillights of a pick-up truck turn the corner before Emma starts her engine.

—

For three days, she calls in sick and spends her days at the beach and nights on floor of her bathroom, heaving into the toilet.

She paddles away from shore on her board, full of plans that involve the deep sea and forever.

But, it's twisted up inside her and goes wherever she goes, unnecessary but dangerous, like an appendix waiting to burst. All the memories, the scars. The people, lingering in the periphery of her vision, always.

There is no escape.

She bobs in the middle of the ocean, legs dangling on either side of the board as the sun beats on her skin. The shoreline shrinks to something manageable, small and miniscule.

Will forever be like this? Still too full for her liking, still not the void she wants.

—

Emma stares at the slip of paper on her counter with numbers scrawled in blue ink. The handwriting is pristine, straight and evenly spaced. If she were smarter, less a masochist, she would've ripped it that morning she found it folded between dollar bills.

It rings twice and then, "Hello?"

Emma breathes. "Why are you here?" She twists a strand of hair around her finger and counts the seconds before Regina responds.

She reaches twenty-seven.

"I have a job at Palos Verdes Stable," Regina says, irritably. The line transmits shuffling, grey crinkling static. Emma pictures Regina shifting in the bed with the checkered blue sheets wearing a twisted sneer that Emma remembers from a time in Maine when she played Sheriff to Regina's Mayor.

"Are you wondering if I chased you across the country out of spite? Because the answer is no, dear, despite what your ego might lead you to believe." There's tiredness in her voice that's still new to Emma, coiled around in the tone and pitch, weathered and beat.

"Would you leave, if I asked nicely?" Her voice feels small, and she feels it, too. Small and miniscule like the shoreline from the ocean. Like a drifter in the middle of open road, surrounded by endless ground. The anger isn't there tonight, as if someone stole it while Emma turned her back. Instead, there's a hollow sort of memory of Regina – floating somewhere above Emma, pressing her down into the dirt and mud and leaves with all the forest watching.

"Are you asking?"

Emma opens her mouth to respond, waits for the words that were there just yesterday but have disappeared now when she needs them most. She thinks: _ask me again when I'm drunk, when I'm angry, ask me another day, not today._

Propping her elbows on the counter, she leans forward to rest her chin on a closed fist, eye roaming her kitchen – dirty dishes in the sink, fridge humming in the corner, a row of empty beer bottles. "Maybe," she says, noncommittally, and then, hangs up, out of fear.

Because there are words to be said, and tonight, Emma almost wants to start,_almost_.

"Night," she murmurs to a memory, and prepares for her shift.

—

The temperature drops in the middle of October, ushering a series of storms and high tides. Emma alternates between the indoor pool at LA Fitness and the choppy waters of the Pacific, using the water to drown out the world.

A truce settles, unevenly and lacking foundation. Regina comes for breakfast four times a week. Emma waits on her with a friendly smile. It feels almost like the time before Regina, when Emma had some measure of control – small, yes, but enough to keep it together.

November passes. December arrives without disaster. The nights bleed together, uneventful and dull. And, she passes daylight by sleeping, swimming, or surfing. (And, she drinks at home now instead of a bar, and hides her phone before she races no one to the bottom of the bottle, and passes out under white sheets, never blue. This also helps.)

Emma hears them before she rounds the corner with a tray of drinks balanced against her hip. Liquids slosh around in cups, but never spill, a skill borne from years of practice.

"Ms. Swan?" She hears Janet say. "Uh, we don't have anyone by that name."

"Emma Swan, the woman you work with. I forgot to give her this." Regina huffs, annoyed.

Her heart stops (or maybe, she wishes it would), and the air turns thick and heavy. The ground beneath her holds tight to the soles of her shoes, like super glue, or wet cement, maybe quick sand because it feels like she's sinking.

Emma squeaks out a word that's would've sounded like _"Stop!"_ if it had escaped properly, but becomes nothing, really. Just a sound that goes unheard.

"Oh, Emma." She hears the shake of Janet's head in the response, hears that sort of wry, apologetic grin the girl gets when stuck in these situations, where a corner of her mouth crooks up and her cheeks turn a shade of pastel pink. "Well, it's Emma Blanchard, but uh, she just went on break, like, right after you left, so if you want to wait, or something."

"No. Just make sure _Ms._ _Blanchard_ receives it, please."

"Um, yeah, no problem."

The tray slips before she can stop it, sending liquid everywhere and glass cups shattering against acrylic flooring.

—

_Emma Swan_.

She kicks hard against the water, cuts straight down the lane with a crisp stroke, arm bent at the right angle, body perfectly horizontal to the floor.

Emma Swan disappeared five years ago, last seen in Boston. There were news reports on the east coast of an unnamed woman who jumped the Longfellow Bridge, diving straight into the Charles River.

No body was ever recovered, and in two years, she will be dead in _absentsia_.

Emma swims, remembering the frigid water and the million needles pricking her skin as she sank. There was just enough magic left to survive the fall, the air closing in around her to suffocate, hissing past with a growl as if it knew she was defying the laws of this world.

The trees dotting the esplanade were orange on that October day – and the last thing Emma Swan sees before air became water and claimed her.

Emma swims.

It's all she's known since that day.

—

They held her in a cell, unfamiliar men in black armor that clanged and rattled with each step. Two by five, approximately, with a window smaller than her face and a locked wooden door. The metal bound around her wrist kept her in place.

Ten minutes before 5 AM, Emma slips outside for her lunch break, crawling into the backseat of her car and dropping into the compact space in relief. To fit, she pulls her legs up to her chest, curling into a ball on her side. She waits for the telltale signs of Regina's truck – the groan of the engine and the squeak of brakes – ill prepared to face the woman after yesterday.

There were other names to pick, others she considered when she swam out of the Charles as Emma, just Emma, who smiled coquettishly at strangers for rides, who offered nothing about her past aside from a vague tale about California and a car accident that left her tragically alone.

The truck arrives at its scheduled time. The engine dies, a car door slams shut, and then, it's quiet. Emma stares at the lamp post outside her window, where bugs have gathered for the night flying in endless circular loops underneath its glare.

Even with the stone wall between the rooms, Emma heard every word, every whimper, every scream that grated on ears like nails clawing a chalkboard. And the last scream, a high pitched wail, like a speaker screeching in protest when a microphone nears, loud and piercing, before it fell quiet, before the _clank, clank, clank_ of the rebel's armor grew faint and far away, burrowed itself inside of her, twisted and curled and fused with everything else she carried already.

Does Regina understand? Why she needs to eviscerate Emma Swan?

A car door swings open, swings back shut, creaking on hinges that need oil. An engine starts, noisily at first before settling into a hum, moving away from Emma, who continues to stare at the lamp post and the bugs and the endless loop of circles.

It was Mary Margaret in the other room.

It was Mary Margaret, who volunteered, who stepped forward when the rebels offered a bargain: _one to kill, one to free_. Mary Margaret who squeezed her hand that one last time and smiled at _Emma Swan_ as if she deserved to live.

"_Find a way back, Emma,"_ she mouthed into the crook of Emma's shoulder during that final hug while Emma nodded, mutely.

Emma Swan, the savior who saved no one.

—

After two weeks of hiding, Emma seeks her out eventually.

It's the day after the New Year, and Emma decides to try, at least for today. Armed with a present and a carton of ice cream as a peace offering, she shows up uninvited on a Saturday, stands in front of Regina's apartment, raps twice on the door and remembers to smile.

It slips open a fraction, enough for Regina to stick her head out the door. "You should leave," she says, strained. It's dark inside, Emma can tell, looking over Regina's shoulder into the living room. The curtains are drawn. There's a bottle of wine on the coffee table, another one on the ground tipped over. Regina's pupils are dilated and the white of her eyes a pale shade of red instead.

Emma knows a bad day when she sees it, the kind that kills a person, exhausts every resource as it makes itself known and tramples around with disregard.

"Okay," Emma agrees (and tries to ignore the relief she feels at seeing Regina in this state). "But this is yours," she holds out the hitch cover for Regina's truck with the face of a horse embossed in the metal. She ordered it from a website last week after she remembered the present Regina left for her at the diner and felt it important to reciprocate, somehow.

Regina hesitates, but reaches for it, anyway, and smiles, faintly. Emma catches the crease in the corner of her mouth, the slight upturn that doesn't reach her eyes but is enough for a day like today. The door widens further to reveal Regina in a pair of dark sweats and a hoodie (guilt replaces relief, because this is not Regina Mills who calls the shots, who cradles beating hearts in the palm of her hand and dictates life and death, not even close or at all).

"See you on Monday." Emma adds, moving to pivot on her left heel to walk away.

"Do you ever think of him?" Regina asks, distantly, in a tone Emma associates with the Queen.

It stops Emma cold, her muscles flooding with lead. Her back stiffens before she responds, "I'll see you on Monday, okay? Feel better." She hears the door of the apartment shut as she's scrambling for her car, suddenly at the precipice of her own bad day.

_Do you ever think of him?_ Him. Reduced to a pronoun in death.

The book from Regina lies open on the front seat, opened to a page Regina had marked herself. It was wrapped in traditional holiday wrapping, with a silver bow, the day Emma got it. Just last week, Emma had found it wedged in her backseat where she'd chucked it angrily, that day Regina asked for an _Emma Swan_ at Norms.

She pulls it to her lap, smooths the pages down with shaking hands.

_They have hung my heart with a sunset,  
__Lilting flowers, and feathered cageless flames,  
__Death and love: ashes of roses, ashes of angels._

She stares at it dully, at the poem, but that verse in particular. Stares until her vision blurs and drops of water materialize on the page.

She doesn't think of _him_. Not ever.

It's too dangerous a thought to start.


End file.
